I Am A Rock
by miasnape
Summary: Preslash, HPSS. Songfic Simon&Garfunkel's 'I Am A Rock'. Out of season, but I had to write it.


I am a Rock

Pre-slash – HP/SS

Songfic – I am a rock, by Simon and Garfunkel

I heard this song and couldn't help but think of Snape.  A little taste of December in summer.  Hopefully will leave you a little warmer for reading it, though.  Fluffy and yet a little angsty.  You'll see.

A winter's day   
In a deep and dark December   
I am alone 

Severus sat on the snow-covered bench of the courtyard, uncaring that his legs were numbing with the cold or that it was melting with his body heat, dampening his thick black robe.  The battle was over, and the students at home with their families.  All except that one – the one who recently lost the very last of his family of any type.

The one who won the war and saved them all.

The one who, when he stuck the final blow, had fallen to the ground in a crouch, holding his head, and cried, not for the loss of the thing he had killed, but for the people it had killed; the innocent lives of people whose only crimes were to support freedom; the people he had been too late to save.

He had cried because he had felt that it was his fault.

He had cried because people had made him into a hero, and he felt like a fraud, when really he was the most truthful of the lot of them.

The snow began to fall again, heavy and clean.  Pure, but oh so cold, and breaking his reverie with it's gentle insistence, bringing to attention the impending frostbite should he stay out here much longer with no cloak or scarf.

Severus sighed and stood, shaking the snow from his robes and heading inside to the Great Hall.  He sat down on a windowsill over looking the rose garden and watched the quiet scene unfold in front of him.

  
Gazing from my window   
To the streets below   
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow 

  
Harry Potter was standing alone in the middle of the gardens.  Because of the newly fallen snow, there were no footsteps – no signs that he had in any way disturbed the beauty of the sight, only added to it.  He stood, snow swirling around him, in his black robes, scarf and cloak

From head to foot in black, his skin almost as white as the snow, the only hints of colour were the red of his lips, the same colour as the winter roses Sprout often boasted of, and the green of his eyes greener than their thorns.  They were a very individual colour of green, Harry's eyes.  The only similar colour he had seen was the colour of the Avada Kedavra curse, which was ironic – as if he wore his purpose in life right out there for people to see.  As if what he looked like defined him rather than what he did; as if it even defined what he did. Perhaps it did.

  
I am a rock   
I am an island 

  
Severus often thought of himself as an island, floating in the sea of chaos that was the wizarding world.  He kept to himself.  He stood alone, not affecting anything or anyone unless they affected him.  Harry Potter, right then, looked like an island.  But he also looked very lonely.

It wasn't that he showed his sadness.  It wasn't that he was signalling that he wanted company – he looked content to just stand there in the snow looking at the roses.  No, he looked so different from everything else.  Looked so different that Severus ached to go out and be different with him.

But then he would make footsteps and mar the perfect vista, just like he marred other things in life when he interfered.  No, best to let him find his own way inside to the company of others; to a place where he wouldn't seem so lonely.  And he would in the end – everyone did in the end, or they died trying.

  
I've built walls   
A fortress deep and mighty   
That none may penetrate 

Severus locked people out.  He knew this.  He locked people out not only to protect them, but because he enjoyed solitude, just like Harry seemed to be doing.

Sometimes, a lot of the time, it was easier to just sit in his rooms at night, doing what needed to be done at his own pace, nobody there to hurry him; put him off or chide him.

Alone, because silence is better than reproach.

And he stayed alone, because his tactics worked – the nasty comments when someone got too close to his heart unwittingly or purposefully.  The distance was so great that, even if someone made progress, without him moving to them at the same time they would never meet in the middle.

He had no friends, not even close acquaintances, because no one cared to try that hard, and if they weren't prepared to try that hard then how would they ever survive being his friend?

  
I have no need for friendship   
Friendship causes pain   
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain. 

  
He remembered the first time he had tried to make friends.  Oh, he had had friends, but they were ones picked out for him; people his father had know from school's children round his age.  People like Lucius and Narcissa.  People who wouldn't offend his father's sensibilities regarding what a true friend was.

When he'd started Hogwarts he had seen it as a chance to be away from his father's beliefs; a way to make his own friends, people he liked to be with rather than was duty-bound to be with, and people who wanted to be with him, not the Snape Heir.

He'd tried to talk to James Potter and Sirius Black, but they had rejected him, laughing cruelly at his name, his aristocratic features and the fact that he was bound to end up in Slytherin; the fact that he liked to study and wasn't interested in silly pranking for reasons other than revenge.

He'd been forced back to his 'old friends', and back to being immersed in Slytherin politics of pure blood and family history and money.  It had changed him, and the changes weren't good.  He lost his hope.

He scorned the Gryffindors for their easy friendship and the Hufflepuffs for their loyal natures and the Ravenclaws for their trust.  He had scorned what he couldn't have; what he believed was a charade, all because of two, immature little boys.  Two immature little boys who had changed him for the worse and then mocked him some more when he showed it.

I am a rock   
I am an island 

  
So he had closed himself off; become an insensitive, unemotional island.

He had tried to ignore what was impossible for him to gain, but in failing had ended up obsessed with it.  He had ended up trying to make sure other people didn't have it.  He had ended up being destructive in his own personal grief.

And until the incident when he realised just how far obsession could make you go – until he had almost died for his own stupidity and longing – he had sunk further and further into Voldemort's circle of influence until he was marked.  And once he had, there had been no going back all the way; no way to redeem himself entirely; no chance of him ever finding that acceptance he had longed for.

He lost a little more hope when he came back to Dumbledore rather than gaining more. And he retreated just that little bit further into himself.

  
Don't talk of love   
Well, I've heard the word before   
It's sleeping in my memory 

As he looked at the still boy in the gardens, he looked at how unlike James Potter he had ended up.

The resemblance was still there – the same messy hair, the same optical deficiency, and the same stature.  But it was all physical, because this Potter before him was more mature at seventeen than James Potter had ever been, even as a father at the age of twenty.  Harry was… he was more of a man than James Potter had ever been, and he had only started to really learn about life.

No, no that wasn't true, because Harry had been learning about life from the day his parents died if rumours were correct.  But he was still young and had more character than most adults he knew did.

And Severus was beginning to have feeling for him, which was regrettable, because he would now have to be extra specially nasty to him to keep him away.  Not that Harry would ever want to get close to him, but it was a precaution he would have to take any way.  He couldn't love him.  Not ever.

  
I won't disturb the slumber   
Of feelings that have died   
If I'd never loved,   
I never would have cried 

  
He had loved before.  He knew the hurt it caused when it wasn't reciprocated. He knew the embarrassment it caused the other party to have him in love with them.

He had loved a Ravenclaw boy, of all people.  One who was kind enough to not have spread it about the school, although he might have simply been avoiding the ignominy of everyone knowing he attracted, well, people like him.

Back as a student he had been just as greasy, just as academic and just as strange; just a little more innocent with it.  And in his innocence he had allowed himself to love, even though he had known it would never be returned.

It had faded though, with time and more pressing matters at hand, especially after the war had really begun.  He had buried it, almost healed, and it only festered a little – only when he thought about Harry.  Actually, that was rather a lot recently.  He couldn't do that anymore.

Anyway, when Lucius had found out he had told Voldemort, and as a lesson, Voldemort had killed the half-blood and his family.

That had been the first time Severus had cried since he was about five, and the last time since.  He had trained himself to hide his emotions so well that they barely existed in him anymore.

  
I am a rock   
I am an island 

  
He looked at Harry again, still unmoving, and had to stuff some more of that emotion – the one that could turn to love if you left it – back into the dark place it came from.  And it had to have come from a dark place – how could he be attracted to someone so young and so troubled?  How could he even deign to add more weight to that burden he carried on his shoulders?  How could he subject Harry to himself?  It was definitely a dark feeling from a dark place.

  
I have my books   
And my potions* to protect me 

So Severus stood and walked away from the windowsill framing the perfect picture of Harry in the middle of a winter rose-garden in a flawless snowdrift.  He walked back to his dungeons; back to his research into healing potions.  It wasn't any less needed now than it had been during the war; more so even, to him.

Potions and books took his mind off things – didn't let him dwell on the deaths and the sorrow and that awful hope and love that threatened to emerge once again.  They kept him separate even more – not everyone was an intellectual capable of understanding what he was writing or making or doing.  And so few tried.  Just another way to keep him floating alone, an island.

  
I am shielded in my armour   
Hiding in my room   
Safe within my womb   
I touch no one and no one touches me 

  
The lower dungeons were his sanctuary.  No one ventured after him if he was not in his office or classroom in the upper dungeons.  There were neither windows to provide bittersweet distractions, nor people willing to garner his wrath to ask a simple question.  When he was here, it sent a message – don't come after me; I want to be alone.

Even if it never explained why, it did the trick, even with Dumbledore.  No one would bother him down here, even if only because he might have been making a volatile potion.  And he threw himself into his studies.  He needed to find the answer to the problem; needed to find a way where no one else could.  It took his mind off people marvellously, and theirs off him equally as well – out of sight, out of mind.

He had a stone armour against human feelings.

  
I am a rock   
I am an island 

  
But then, just as he was about to crack the problem – just as the answer was about to tumble into his brain – a knock on the door broke his concentration.

He couldn't find it in himself to be angry at the soaked, chilled and shaking boy at his door.

He tried.  He tried so hard, but the boy looked so helpless and determined all at the same time.  Not to mention freezing cold, and likely about to catch pneumonia.

He scowled at the boy, but all he got in return was a hopeful smile.

"Professor, may I come in?"

And not all the books or potions or stone armour, or even his own carefully constructed mental wall could stand up to the full-on assault that happened when Harry looked up at him, laid a hand on his arm and looked at him with those hopeful eyes.

He looked at the emerald-eyed boy in front of him as the boy looked for his reaction to the touch.

Severus stepped aside and held open the door.

"Come in."

And the rock feels no pain   
And an island never cries

Severus knew he was putting himself in danger of more pain; more tears. But he was also letting himself hope.  Voldemort had killed the Ravenclaw, but he had tried to kill Harry many times before, and Harry had proven himself too strong.

There was no Voldemort to worry about anymore, just Harry, and damned if for some reason he didn't trust the boy.

He took the boy's soaking cloak and hung it up to dry, gesturing to a seat, before slowly closing the thick, newly usurped barricade of an oak door; locking himself once again away from the rest of the world.  But this time he had company in his sanctuary.  Maybe this would work.  Maybe he wouldn't have to cry again.

Maybe, just maybe, two islands could meet.

Maybe they didn't have to be so alone after all.

He wondered if there were footsteps in the rose garden, but dismissed it.  It didn't matter too much if, in the end, they led here.

R&R, even if you didn't like it.

XOX,

Mia Snape

*(A/N - poetry in the Simon and Garfunkel version)


End file.
